Welcome to Gaia! ::

Encke had, to some degree, expected some degree of enthusiasm, but he hadn't necessarily expected Caedus to freeze. He was relieved when he thawed out and nodded eagerly, just about dashing back beyond the barrier to drop off the food.

He had been hoping that Caedus would be that enthusiastic about it. Encke might have been bouncing on the tips of his toes in the few seconds between Caedus' disappearance and Caedus' reappearance.

Caedus reassuring that he would definitely love the food was certainly something that Luke would appreciate. There was a part of him that hoped someday, once they cleared out the Chaos threat with this beam, that maybe Encke could formally introduce the two of them and Luke could just make Caedus' favorites for him. That was how Luke tended to prefer serving things after all -- warm, fresh, and where he could admire the smiles it brought to people's faces -- "Yeah! Basi's right." Encke offered his arm out to Caedus after he fished out his phone. "Though might be easier if you just take my arm so I can press the button here..."

He swung out the phone, glancing down at the button.

"Let me know when you're ready! Ah, just be careful about looking up when we get there. I don't know if you get vertigo or anything, but Encke's Comet moves pretty fast and you can kind of tell."

Encke had gotten plenty used to it, but it could sometimes be jarring to realize the sky was moving as quickly as it was...

"If it does make you sick, we'll take a second to take a break, alright?" Encke offered the eager Caedus a smile, nodding in agreement when he said he would be cautious.

Good.

He pressed the button, and the trio of them was off.

If Caedus did look up immediately, he would have noticed a few things. Encke had been right, first of all: if one looked for more than a few seconds, they would realize the sky was moving. The stars moved across the sky the way clouds might have on a cloudy day back on Earth. Those weren't necessarily the only things moving across the sky, though.

The view of the stars above would be interrupted by the sparks of lightning going from one coil to the other, attached to structures primarily made of stone, with bioluminescent paints in cracks that slightly increased in brightness when the lightning hit the coil.

Where they stood was on a stone path, on a street filled with a few buildings. Further ahead was a larger building, grander, with the largest spire reaching upward into the sky.

Encke let go of Basiluzzo's hand, letting out a happy sigh.

"Well, we're here."

Basiluzzo was entranced by the stars and lightning every time he was taken to Encke's Comet. It wasn't disorienting, not anymore, but there was a part of him that still couldn't quite believe that he was there, in space. In a place that was decidedly different--and far--from Earth. Seeing this beauty above him in the way he never quite could in a city.

"Very different from Earth, isn't it? I think I was floored the first time I came here."

He might have given Encke--whose hand Basiluzzo was still holding--a subtle glance when he said floored.

Maybe there was more to it.

"Encke, did you have a place to start in mind?"

He might have been teasing his husband, but Caedus also looked like he might be a little overwhelmed--

“Space Salsa,” Caedus repeated slowly, entranced by the concept. He wondered what counted as space salsa, but then, the universe was newer to Earth than it was to him. Even if he’d been stuck in the Rift for so long, he’d still traveled before then. He’d still seen so much before then.

Encke and Basiluzzo were warm and welcoming; if he had questions, he didn’t feel like he needed to be self conscious. Thankfully, they were forthcoming with information and he hardly even had to ask before they were answering something for him.

“That is impressive,” he said, and felt like he could say it a dozen times over and still mean it. “I am amazed at the condition of your world. You must have worked very hard to restore it. Or it has always been resilient. It is beautiful. Is there more than just the Capitol here? Have you explored much beyond this?” But then, because he was curious about Basiluzzo too, he asked, “Have you had much time to spend on your world?”

Encke had a way of soaking up compliments like a sponge, and hearing of the condition that Encke's Comet was in and the work it must have taken to get there from both Caedus and his husband might have had him glowing just a bit more than usual. "It's taken a lot of work, honestly. When I first set foot here, this place felt ... dead. Like a ghost town, really. The structures were still here, but. Thank you. It's good to know other people can see my efforts, you know?"

If he looked to the building they were approaching, he could remember when the bioluminescence had faded, when there wasn't the crackle of electricity, when the paths below him were cracked and destroyed, when there weren't plants sprouting between rocky craigs--

Hearing the description of Basiluzzo's wonder captured Encke's interest, and he was incredibly curious but also knew it'd be a few more weeks before he could even ask if he could have a look. Sandy would track with him being a Uranus knight from what he had absorbed; he had never gotten a chance to look, though--

"There are actually places here beyond the Capitol. My memories tell me that this comet was small enough that a lot of people descended here during their day even if they lived somewhere else at their night, but I've found settlements on that mountain," he followed a few sparks up to where they would be, pointing out the not-so-distant peak for Caedus to take a look at. "I've also found outcrops like radially out from here -- this was the center of Enckean Society."

And the Ruling House was the center of that.

"There are mostly homes out there, and some places I'm certain were dedicated farms."

Caedus' fascination at everything Encke said and showed made Basiluzzo feel lighter, more buoyant. He liked seeing that! Basiluzzo remembered how captivated he, himself, had been the first few times that Encke had taken him. He also knew how much Encke liked showing off his homeworld, and an audience like Caedus was a bonus.

The compliment from Caedus about his wonder--despite having never actually seen it--made Basiluzzo's face just a bit rosier. "I can't wait to share it once it's ready." He hoped it wouldn't take long, itched to be able to show it off the way Encke showed off his comet. But he wasn't even sure he could bring people along in the state it was in, regardless of whether or not he wanted to--

The question about being alone on the comet was a fair one. There was enough lift back into it that Basiluzzo would have trouble believing that, himself, if he hadn't been there enough times to know how much of a ghost town it really was.